Watch This Amazing 3D-Printed Clock Made With A Multi-Toolhead Printer

2 years

In the future multi-toolhead robots will harvest our organs and control our reproductive cycles. Until then, they can make amazing clocks! This clock, created by Matt Olczyk, was made using a ZMorph 3D printer, a printer that can swap tool heads to perform different actions.

The ZMorph system has a CNC mill, dual extruders, an (optional) chocolate extruder, and even a laser burner. By using all of the heads, Olczyk could create gears that intermeshed, carve out numerals, and even engrave pieces with various indicators. It was a massive undertaking the results are pretty cool. The team at ZMorph wrote:

￼Sometimes 3D printing is not enough. Additive manufacturing disrupted the scene, but in a vast number of cases, subtractive methods are still the way to go. Like all technologies, 3D printing has its limitations, stemming from the very foundation of how 3D printing works.For some designers and engineers this technology still falls short of results of other rapid prototyping or fabrication methods they are used to, naming injection molding, or CNC milling as some examples. And the arguments are strong – limited materials, hence limited mechanical and aesthetical properties and in some cases even cost efficiency of production. And when 3D printing is not enough, the obvious choice is to reach for a different technology.

The resulting clock is pretty unorthodox – it uses a pendulum system to drive the hands but the gears are splayed over a wider surface to make them more visible. It’s a working clock and Olczyk made pieces out of plastic, wood, and even Plexiglas. It shows the possibilities in 3D printing that aren’t directly related to Makerbot-like extrusion or Formlabs-like SLA.